Patent decision

BL number
O/287/19
Concerning rights in
GB1222279.0
Hearing Officer
Mr B Buchanan
Decision date
28 May 2019
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Ariadne Insight Limited
Provisions discussed
PA 1977 section 1(2)(c)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

The present invention relates to spreadsheets, and specifically to the problem of a 32 bit spreadsheet application having insufficient addressable memory available to enable complex functions to be run. The invention also addresses the problem of certain types of structured data being incompatible with the contents of a cell in a spreadsheet. The invention provides a computer program comprising a framework having user-defined functions which can be called from a cell in a spreadsheet to then run in a separate process in memory. The program runs separately to but in conjunction with the spreadsheet application. This solution effectively increases the limits of addressable memory available to the spreadsheet software by using the memory of the second process without adding to the memory footprint of the spreadsheet application. It can provide access to structured data within the framework via a pointer from a cell in the spreadsheet. The Hearing Officer followed the four step Aerotel test to determine whether there was a technical contribution. He applied the AT&T signposts as modified in HTC. The contribution was not found to provide the required technical effect and the claimed invention related solely to a program for a computer as such so the application did not meet the requirements of section 1(2)(c). The application was refused under section 18(3).

Full decision O/287/19 PDF document309Kb